The world is stunned with the unique functions of Lief, a new app from a team of young Vietnamese developers

Ngoc Huynh

Based on a concept devised by a Dutch entrepreneur and made reality by a team of Vietnamese developers, Lief has raised eyebrows by challenging the conventions set by social media.

Its three core concepts are that it’s more private, less instant and more meaningful… But will this be enough to sway people in Vietnam?

Released this week on the App Store and Google Play Store, the Lief app lets people “be social in a private way.” By encouraging meaningful online interaction, users can share moments with the people they care about the most.

Unlike social media networks, Lief only allows you to invite 12 people into your inner circle. This is a carefully measured step towards making online interactions more meaningful: recent statistics show that the average Facebook user has 338 friends; in contrast, a study from last year showed that Americans have only 9 “close friends” in real life. While social media tells us to spread our attention on hundreds of chance acquaintances, Lief encourages us to focus on the people we care about the most.

The founder of Lief, Marco van Aggele remarks: “I think people deserve the right to feel a true, personal connection by sharing things privately with their family members and true friends instead of the ‘public share’ that is the normal way of interacting online these days.”

The need for privacy is a serious issue for social media users: in a recent Pew research study, 27 percent of Facebook users complained about other people seeing posts and comments that they weren’t meant to see. Moreover, 36 percent of the respondents felt uncomfortable with Facebook because other people post information or pictures about them without their consent.

What’s worse, a study by Utah Valley University found that social media makes people pessimistic: the more time the test subjects spent on Facebook, the less happy and satisfied they felt with their own lives. Mirroring the findings of the study, some 11 million young people have already left Facebook. This is a growing trend: more and more people choose to deactivate their accounts or simply stop using the service actively. Curiously, the latter group professes to keep their accounts in fear of losing connection with friends who use the service.

The incipient flight from social media has created a vacuum, as people need a viable alternative that they can trust: a platform that’s both deeply intimate and private.

Since it’s built around these very concepts, Lief hopes to fill the growing niche. Just 48 hours from launch in Vietnam, it’s started gaining a user base. However, some of the users have raised issue with only being able to add 12 loved ones into their inner circles and why it’s not possible to neither see nor comment on what other people have shared.

These concerns are the exact challenges that the Lief team was preparing for. According to Marco, “one of my biggest concerns during the development process was that people are used to how Facebook and other social networks work. Even though our concept is completely different, people will inevitably compare us to them”.

While social networks are built around the concept of everything being public, the core concept that Lief was built on is privacy. Whenever anything is shared on Lief, it is only visible by the person sharing it and the intended recipients in his or her inner circle. There is no way to see what other people shared. Another conscious omission is the lack of a user directory: completing one’s inner circle has to be done on an individual basis. Moreover, even the list of people in one’s inner circle is private and inaccessible by others. In short, there is no way for others to snoop around and see what you and your loved ones are sharing on Lief.

In Vietnam, there are 31.2 million registered Facebook accounts. However, there’s a cultural factor that will sway many people towards Lief.

The project manager for Lief in Vietnam, Mr. Nhat Quan, explains: “There are numerous social networks to connect people around the world, be it for friends or for business, but why not have one dedicated only for the people you love? The Lief concept focuses on meaningful communication, which is also relevant to the Vietnamese tradition of always paying attention to family members and taking care of those we love.”

With its advantages of privacy and intimacy compared to social media networks, it seems the Lief team has hit the right sentiment.

It’s time to express who we truly are to the people who matter most. It’s time to focus on the few true friends rather than hundreds of chance acquaintances. Simply put, it’s now time to be more social… in a private way.

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Source : http://www.thanhniennews.com/